I not only composed for them a long series of theatrical pieces, novel in kind and congenial to their talents, but I also furnished them with a new arsenal of stock passages, essential to the Commedia dell'Arte, and which they call its dote, or endowment.[29] I could not say how many prologues and epilogues in verse I wrote, to be recited on the first and last evenings of the run of some play by the leading lady for the time being; nor how many songs to be inserted in their farces; nor how many thousand pages I filled with soliloquies, sallies of despair, menace, reproach, supplication, paternal reprimand, and such-like matters appropriate to all kinds of scenes in improvised comedy. The players {145}call such fragments of studied rhetoric generici, or commonplaces. They are vastly important to comedians who may not be specially gifted for improvisation; and everything of the sort I found in their repertory was vitiated by the turgid mannerisms of the seicento.
I was godfather at the christening of their babies, author-in-chief, counsellor, master, and mediator to the whole company; all this without assuming the pretentious airs of a pedant or a claimant on their gratitude; but always at their own entreaty, while I preserved the tone of disinterested, humane, and playful condescension.
Some of the girls of this dramatic family—none of whom were ugly, and none without some aptitude for the profession—begged me to help them with support and teaching. I consented, provided them with parts adapted to their characters, taught them how they ought to act these parts, and put them in the way of winning laurels. At their entreaties I devoted some hours of my leisure to giving them more general instruction. I made them read and translate French books suited to their calling. I wrote them letters upon divers familiar themes, calculated to make them think and develop their sentiments under the necessity of composing some reply or other. I corrected their mistakes, which frequently consisted in the unexpected and uncalled-for use of capital letters, and laughed{146} heartily while doing so. This afforded me sprightly amusement and gave them a dash of education.
When they left Venice for the customary six months,[30] I ran no risk of not receiving letters from them, written in rivalry with one another—sometimes real love-letters—arriving by each post from Milan, Turin, Genoa, Parma, Mantua, Bologna, all the cities where they stopped to act. Nor were answers wanting upon my side; playful, affectionate, threatening, derisive; taking any tone which I judged capable of keeping these young creatures wide-awake. It seemed to me that such an active correspondence and exchange of sentiments was the most appropriate and profitable school for a comedian.
Let no man deceive himself by supposing that it is possible to converse with actresses without love-making. You must make it, or pretend to make it. This is the only way to guide them to their own advantage. Love moulds and kneads them in flesh, bones, and marrow. Love begins to be their guiding-star at the age of five or six. In this respect, I soon discovered that the austerity of Sacchi's company was a barren formula; just as I had previously noticed that strictness in private families, beyond a certain point, had ceased to be accounted of utility or value.{147}
Among actresses, the term friendship is something fabulous and visionary. They immediately substitute the word love, and do not attend to distinctions. Their idea of friendship only serves as the means of mutual deception between women, accompanied by deluges of endearing phrases and Judas kisses.
I ought, however, to declare that the actresses of Sacchi's company carried on their love-affairs with prudence and without indecency. The ideal of severity which prevailed there bore at least these fruits of goodness; and the ideal of honesty produced notably different results from those which other systems in the trade of love elicited elsewhere. How many actresses lay siege deliberately and in cold blood to their lovers, despoil them of their property, and do their very best to suck them dry! Catching at the locks of what they call their fortune and I call their infamy, these women do not stop to see whether the path before them be clean or filthy. They worship wickedness and abhor good living, if they hope to fill their purse or gratify their cupidity by the former. Though they strive to cloak their baseness with the veil of verbal decency, and do all in their power to preserve external decorum, they trample in their souls on shame and sing this verse:—
| "Colla vergogna io già mi sono avvezza." |
| ("With infamy I long have been at home.") |
For the actresses of Sacchi's company, it is only justice{148} to assert that they were far removed from harbouring such sentiments of vile and degrading venality.